Buy it now

Cons
Battery life falls short of competition. Keys rattle. Touchpad is small.

Bottom Line

The Sony VAIO VPC-YB35KX is a competent netbook, with an AMD APU that offers a decent combination of processing and graphics, and a healthy feature set that includes stereo Bluetooth, HDMI, and two card reader slots. Its battery life is a bit of a letdown, but it's not so bad as to be a deal breaker.

While a lot of noise is being made about tablets and ultrabooks, the Sony VAIO VPC-YB35KX ($549.99 direct), Sony's latest netbook, is hard to beat in portability and price. Whether you're a student on the go or want a PC for around the house, the VPC-YB35KX still fills an important niche, providing a lot of productive functionality for a price that won't break the bank. With a new AMD E-450 processor and a large 500GB hard drive, this may be just the thing to carry to class or the coffee shop.

Design
The plastic chassis is sturdy, but lightweight, making it easy to pick up and carry from class to class, or from room to room around the house. At 1.25 inches thick, It's not the thinnest netbook we've seen, and Sony's design emphasizes the prominent hinge with a power button on one end and a battery that elevates the rear of the chassis. Despite the chunky design, it still only weighs 3.05 pounds, which is lighter than the 3.5-pound HP Pavilion dm1z ($449 direct, 4.5 stars) and 3.1 pound Lenovo IdeaPad S205 ($579.99 direct, 3.5 stars).

The 11.3-inch widescreen is a bump up from the 10.1-inch screens normally found on netbooks, but the 1,366-by-768 resolution is fairly standard. It may not be enough space to work in side-by-side windows, but you'll be able to surf the Web comfortably and enjoy 720p video through sites like Hulu and Netflix. You'll also be able to use the VPC-YB35KX for Skype and similar video chat services thanks to an integrated camera and microphone found just above the screen.

The VPC-YB35KX's full-sized keyboard provides a comfortable typing experience when compared to the 75- to 95-percent keyboards found on older netbooks. The chiclet keys are well spaced, but you will find that the keys themselves provide very shallow movement, and they feel like they rattle loosely a bit while typing, with the keys shifting beneath the fingertips as you type. The smooth surfaced trackpad is responsive, but small. Just above the keyboard, there's also a button marked Assist, a dedicated button that calls up Sony's VAIO Care support software.

Features
The VPC-YB35KX is equipped with a healthy selection of ports, with a few features not commonly found on a netbook, such as HDMI output, two card reader slots and Stereo Bluetooth support. That HDMI output adds a little something extra as well, putting out up to 1080p video to monitors and HDTVs. Also on the netbook are three USB 2.0 ports, jacks for a headphone and mic, a VGA video connection, and Gigabit Ethernet. Rounding out the selection is 802.11n Wi-Fi, which can be turned on and off with a physical switch on the device.

As is common in the netbook category, there's no optical drive, but the VPC-YB35KX is equipped with a 500GB 5,400rpm spinning hard drive. That's more storage space than you'll find on either the Acer Aspire One 722-BZ480 ($329 list, 3.5 stars) or HP dm1z, which both offer only 320GB drives.

Preinstalled on the drive is a 32-bit version of Windows 7 Home Premium, along with Microsoft Office Starter 2010, a 30-day trial of Norton Internet Security, and several VAIO-branded utilities, such as VAIO Care and Media Gallery. Sony also covers the VPC-YB35KX with a one-year warranty that includes parts and labor as well as one-year of toll-free tech support.

Performance
The VPC-YB35KX is equipped with AMD's latest Fusion Accelerated Processing Unit (APU), a single chip die shared by both a 1.65GHz dual-core E-450 processor and AMD Radeon HD 6320 graphics processor. This approach allows for better graphics support than might be offered with traditional integrated graphics, while conserving space and energy. The APU is complemented with 4GB of RAM. In Cinebench R11.5 the Sony scored 0.65 points, outpacing the Lenovo S205 (0.63) and HP dm1z (0.61).

The VPC-YB35KX also managed an overall score of 54 points in SYSmark 2007, our general performance test. By comparison, the HP dm1z and Lenovo S205 both scored 57 points. Though the VPC-YB35KX did moderately well across the board, it produced the best scores in video related tasks (70 points), due largely to the enhanced graphics capabilities.

In battery life, the VPC-YB35KX disappointed, providing 4 hours 27 minutes of life with its 38Wh battery, falling far short of the 6- and 7-hour batteries found in competitors. The HP dm1z lasted 7:08 with a larger 55Wh battery, but the difference can't be chalked up entirely to battery capacity, as the Acer Aspire One 722-BZ480 lasted 7:17 with a similarly sized 40Wh battery. Regardless of the reasons behind it, 4-and-a-half hours will get a student through several class periods without needing to be plugged in, but it won't take you through the entire day, so you'll still need to pack along the charger.

The Sony VAIO VPC-YB35KX has plenty going for it, like an 11.3-inch screen, a strong combination of processing and graphics, 500GB hard drive, and a comfortable full-size keyboard. It's enough to provide on the go productivity without making some of the sacrifices required by 9- and 10-inch netbooks, or dealing with the lack of office functions in tablets. You will, however, find similar features and better battery life in the $450 HP Pavilion dm1z, which is why it remains our Editors' Choice.

Brian Westover is an Analyst for the Hardware Team, reviewing laptops, desktops, and storage devices.
As a child, Brian was frequently asked "What do you want to be when you grow up?" His answer alternated between...

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